Where would you go to get a good tenor? No further than the nearest phone, you might think; call up the agent, draw up the deal, and you're away. Except that good tenors are in such demand, and have their lives mapped out so far in advance, that no matter how nicely you ask you're likely to get a polite refusal. "You have to eyeball them," declares the Cork impresario Barra O Tuama, who has had extraordinary success in bringing worldclass singers to Ireland for his Opera Gala - Plus series over the past decade. "The agents will just give you the brush-off; you have to go and find your man, and sit him down, and look him in the eye. It's the only way."

And so it was that, last May, O Tuama began a trek around the opera houses of Europe in search of the singers he wanted for his 1988-99 season. He began in Bonn, where he met the principal guest tenor of the Kirov, Alexei Steblianko, now living and working in Germany. Steblianko was between performances of Nabucco, but a meal was had, a programme agreed, and both Steblianko and his wife, the soprano Larissa Shevchenko, will sing in Ireland in November, together with the Italian baritone Marzio Giossi.

Next stop Prague, where, after an indifferent Tosca at the State Opera, O Tuama went to see the Czech soprano Anda Luisa Bogda as Donna Anna in Don Giovanni at the State National Theatre. "Prague is an extraordinary place," says O Tuama. "There's music morning, noon and night." He signed Bogda for a future concert tour but, to his annoyance, failed to land the tenor who partnered her in the production. "I can't get him just now," he admits, but adds, with a glint in his eye, "but I think it will happen in due course".

Then it was on to Marseille to see the Argentinian tenor Jose Cura in La Forza Del Destino. "And I must say, I shed tears of delight at the end. I was never at a performance like it. For half-an-hour afterwards the audience was stamping and jumping and screeching." How to follow such an experience? Well, with a visit to La Scala to see Cura in Manon Lescaut under the baton of Riccardo Muti, perhaps.

"It was my first time to attend a performance at La Scala - I've been trying to get tickets for many years - and it was a marvellous setting. The staging must have cost a fortune. In the third act, when the couple are parting, it was a scene like the Titanic on stage and Des Grieux ran up the ramp to say goodbye to Manon - it was an unforgettable scene. If you could reproduce that in concert . . . "

Not possible, alas, but Cura can be guaranteed to have a pretty good try when he returns to the RDS for a gala concert next March in the company of the National Symphony Orchestra conducted by Alistair Dawes, and guest soprano Cara O'Sullivan.

For all the glamour of La Scala, O Tuama says he prefers the intimate spaciousness of Covent Garden; or, at least, of the old Covent Garden. "To my mind it was streets ahead as a theatrical space. I'll miss it. Anyhow, my final trip this year was to London to tie up a contract with Tito Beltran for January; and I understand that when Covent Garden reopens, he's going to be one of the key people coming back in there." For his concerts in Cork and Dublin in January, the Chilean tenor will be singing with the English mezzo Sally Burgess. So which, of all the venues he visited, did O Tuama like best? " I thought the atmosphere in Marseille was extraordinary, and Don Giovanni in Prague astounded me. It was beautiful."

Over the years O Tuama has built up a personal rapport with his visiting soloists which has - mostly - survived the vagaries of tantrums, sore throats, prior commitments and prickly personalities. There was one tenor who, on being shown to his luxury hotel suite, whipped out a compass, declared that the bed was facing the wrong way and demanded a change of accommodation. "He was given a fairly robust farewell at the airport, and he'll never be back," says O Tuama grimly. "But as a general rule, artists are much more easygoing than people think. They all have strong personalities - they know what want, and they get it - but at the end of the day they're professionals; they have a job to do and they just want to get on with it."

The opening concert of this season's Opera Gala - Plus series will be at the National Concert Hall on Saturday October 3rd, when the Irish soprano Regina Nathan will be joined by two Italian singers, tenor Robert Brugioni and baritone Alberto Gazale, with piano accompaniment by Brenda Hurley.